Tailorable blog

Rien ne va plus

Sadly, my Nabaztag stopped responding. Maybe it gathered too much dust, maybe it was overwhelmed about being part of an art exhibition, maybe it caught virtual myxomatosis, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, no more experimenting with using the bunny as an ambient display. One of the things I wanted to test, was to use it as an ambient activity indicator of a SharePoint workspace. Now, maybe this is just a good excuse to look for other cool gadgets… Any suggestions of things that could be used as an ambient display?

Lucky timing and surfing the hypecycle…

Funny to see that my story about the virtual Nabaztag was picked up in the press. I guess the Easter bunny and the interest of the press in Second Life helped me. My employer, the Telematica Instituut, made a short press release about how this virtual Easter bunny acts as a watchdog for your Second Life store. Also my main point, using the plastic rabbit as an ambient display for information you like to be aware about in the background, was fortunately picked up. I had a nice interview with the local newspaper, the Tubantia, and the story was published in Hotspot, Computable, Winmag, and ComputerIdee.

As some people asked about it -
Hereby a bit more technical info about how to configure the SecondNabaz (currently version 1.4). The configuration is done via the notecard that is included. Once you rez the SecondNabaz in Second Life and you press “Edit”, the contents should include a notecard you can modify. This notecard has an entry for a serial number (sn=0000000000). Replace the zeros with the MAC address of your bunny (without spaces), as indicated on the sticker on the bottom of your Nabaztag.

The second number in the natecard (token=000000000000000) represents the token you receive when you go to www.nabaztag.com -> my nabaztag -> tools -> api. This number is needed to avoid bunny spam.

The third number on the notecard is the radius (in metres) at which the virtual bunny should detect visitors (min 0 - max 96 meter). Set this number for instance to 25 to make sure your bunny actually detects people, without them having to bump into it.

Just in case you did not know: Violet, the French company that created Nabaztag, is in no way affiliated with this SecondNabaz.

My Nabaztag’s Second Life

Last weekend I decided to create a Second Life version of the Nabaztag, the WiFi bunny developed by Violet. My wife gave me a Nabaztag for my birthday last year, and even though I had some cool plans for programming it, all it did so far was it’s Tai Chi and telling us the weather forecast twice a day. That, and amaze our visitors of course

Anyway, the Second Life version I made detects if avatars are around. If so, it makes my real Nabaztag wiggle its ears and tell me their names. Also, if people talk to the virtual bunny, the real one pronounces the chat to me. The Second Life version of the Nabaztag includes a script using the Linden Script Language to send commands to the Nabaztag using the API published by Violet.

The resulting mash-up is an example of how virtual worlds and the real world can be interconnected. Anyway, I like the idea of using the Nabaztag as an ambient display for information that you do not need on your screen, but still like to be aware of. Just having the bunny wiggle its ears when you have visitors in your Second Life store, for instance, can keep you aware without requiring you to be logged in to Second Life all the time. Of course, if you have any other ideas about cool or even practical uses, please feel free to use the comments.

If you own a Nabaztag, and would like to give it a Second Life as well, pick up your free copy of my SecondNabaz at SL Exchange and let me know what you think.